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A beginner's guide to the Raspberry Pi Zero

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The tiny and ridiculously inexpensive Raspberry Pi Zero has already proven to be a huge hit, selling out everywhere (including on the front cover of 10,000 magazines). But if you're one of the lucky 20,000 or so who managed to get hold of one of the £4 computers, you might be asking a deceptively simple question -- what next?

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Understanding the Pi Zero

Before you actually start working with your Pi Zero, it is worth knowing what all those bits of technology on the board actually do. This illustrated guide, based on a schematic by Element14, explains what you've got to play with.

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The Basic Starter Kit

The first thing you'll need to get started with the Raspberry Pi Zero is... a Raspberry Pi Zero. And since they're sold out across the web, that's trickier than it sounds. Don't fall for eBay touts though; according to the Pi Foundation you'll be able to pick one up for £4 soon enough.

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While the Zero is a full-featured computer, as with the original you'll need a fair bit of extra equipment to get started. That's mainly a result of its diminutive Mini HDMI and MicroUSB ports, which are smaller than those found on most of the equipment you're going to want to plug into it.

An essential early purchase is a starter kit that turns the Mini HDMI into a full HDMI port, and a micro-B USB to USB A female cable, so you can plug your keyboard (more likely a powered USB hub) into the board.

Some of the cables you'll need to get started with the Zero.

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RaspberryPi.org sells those two connectors, along with a 2x20 0.1" male General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) header, for just £4. (GPIO connectors allow you to easily hook up things like lights, buttons and sensors and code the Pi to work them into programs).

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The PiHut also stocks an essentials kit -- which comes with the adapters, plus rubber feet for your Zero and some different GPIO headers in a tin, for £6 (though it is currently out of stock). It's worth getting one of these kits, however -- Maplin sells the HDMI adapter on its own (pointlessly gold-plated) for £12.99.

You'll also need a Micro USB power cable (£5 from Raspberrypi.org, others available) and a keyboard, mouse, screen and 8GB MicroSD card. And yes, you can buy a case but you don't need to. Just make it out of Lego.

Installing an operating system is simple. Download and install NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software), choose your operating system of choice and install it. There are also separate operating systems available for certain tasks -- perhaps most notably retro gaming.

Next Steps

There are hundreds of things to do with a Raspberry Pi, and WIRED is looking forward to highlighting some of the best and most creative over the next few weeks.

Here are some of the fun things being done with the Zero so far less than a week after its release.

Retro Gaming

The Pi Zero is small enough that it can be easily turned into a miniature retro gaming system that can be embedded within an old TV -- as in this example on the Element 14 website -- or even into a video game controller itself. Self-proclaimed tinkerer Terrence Eden managed to hack a version of Doom into a controller, running directly via HDMI into the TV. Necessary? Perhaps not, given that virtually every computer ever made already runs Doom, including graphical calculators and the Apple Watch. But it's exceptionally neat to see a game that once took a tower PC to run crammed by a hobbyist into a gamepad.

What are you making? WIRED wants to know. Over the next few weeks we'll be featuring the most interesting and creative projects using the new Raspberry Pi Zero we can find. Tell us what you're doing with yours, and help us to inspire a new generation of Raspberry Pi users to start hacking their own projects together with this unique new tool.